From andrew at andrewyu.org Fri Oct 21 07:05:11 2022 From: andrew at andrewyu.org (Andrew Yu) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2022 13:05:11 +0800 Subject: [abstract-beauty] Decentralizing Technology Production Message-ID: Dear all, Here are my thoughts on the current situation on the oligopoly of the CPU and general technology market. Many markets, especially the computer hardware market down to the basics such as the architecture/chipset-like level, are Economics of Scale, meaning that the cost of production per unit decreases as the total number of production for one entity. This naturally gives rise to oligopolies, also known in the technology industry as companies like Intel and Microsoft. An oligopoly is a market structure in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of large sellers or producers. People often confuse this with monopolies, for which the latter Francis Wayland defines as ``an exclusive right granted to a [hu]man or a monopoly of [hu]man, to empoly their labor or capital in some particular manner'', which cannot exist in a free market (i.e. free of government regulations). The technology industry in most countries is an oligopoly, not a monopoly. The harm of oligopolys (and monopolies, which are similar in this context) are commonly discussed in Economics, such as the lack of competition causing prices to be solely in control of one economic entity, who may set insane prices in seek of profits, which is especially harmful for products that serve basic human needs, such as food and water. And in modern times, technology is often a necessity for daily life, exacebating the harms of a relevant oligopoly market. There is yet another practical harm of a oligopoly technology market: about the rights of users. When CPUs are produced by almost solely Intel, AMD, and a few others, they are now free to add their backdoors and ``management engines'' into the CPUs that we users use daily, and their seek for profit pushes them to do so. We now have to work with spyware in our computer hardware, and we can't do anything about it, because the oligopoly nature of the market doesn't allow us common people to monitor, produce, develop, or otherwise deal with our own technology except for the ``expected usages'' that the oligopoly superimposes on us. One way out is to decentralize the development and production of CPUs and related goods. Individual cities and towns should be able to produce computers, from the very basics, for their own people. And I know this sounds like an anti-internationalisation self-sustaining propaganda chiche economic outcome, but if you think about it, such an essential part of life (like technology) would be better served by people who'd be less likely to massively implement spyware that would be of any use to them. Initiatives to decentralize development of CPUs and other computer components, such as LibreSilicon, have existed for a short time (in comparison to the time that Intel and AT&T have existed). We're nowhere near what Intel could make, however, partly due to the insane patents around their technology. Patent trolls exist and often target free software and free hardware projects, and thus applying the idea of copyleft as it works for copyright, to patents, may aid practical development. And at this point, we can't really develop upon existing foundations, so we have to ignore pre-existing knowledge and develop our own architecture and CPU from the start, paying attention to copyleft licenses and copyleft-in-patents to hopefully prevent patent trolls from taking over the world again. (This is also what the Evosaur project is attempting to do.) Please tell me your thoughts on this. Andrew Yu https://www.andrewyu.org/ From andrew at andrewyu.org Fri Oct 21 18:02:02 2022 From: andrew at andrewyu.org (Andrew Yu) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2022 18:02:02 +0200 Subject: [abstract-beauty] The Abstract Beauty of Physics, Mathematics and Biology Message-ID: <20221021160202.ttwvb7tzv2se4iye@andrewyu.org> On 22/10/19 07:48PM, Joey Zhang wrote: > To put it in a bit exaggerated way, physics "redeemed" me. Redeem is quite a word here---do you mean it `saved' you or it `fulfilled' you? > It's a way of making sense of the world with elegant, deterministic > laws. You see, ever since scientists start realizing that the world > we live in is imperfect, they start to look into the ideal world. No > friction, no air resistance, it's the simplistic realm above our daily > senses that perhaps can show us a way to "the truth". The beauty of > physics is that it can penetrate all the ordinary phenomena and grasp > the abstract, ideal concept behind it. It's like how we remember > things by gist instead of the details- capturing what is universal, > ideal, and elegant. Personally this paragraph gave me the feeling of abstractness. I had to read it several times over to really grasp what you're conveying... a demonstration of abstraction in language. I'm attempting to `simplify' a beautiful prose to extremely ordinary English here, hopefully without losing much information. Basically, scientists realize that the phenomenons we experience aren't perefect, as in there are factors that to us humans seem irrelevant or to some extent exist solely as a disturbance to the reality of what're looking at. It's like looking at programs, which have muffled code and tons of special cases for realistic purposes, trying to grasp the concept behind it--the simple, original intent that the program is supposed to do. It feels like a bit part of physics is the process of figuring out, decomposing reality into perfect representations of (usually) vectors, yielding a product that we ultimately call reality. If the above is a semi-accurate description of what you mean (hopefully), then yeah I agree with you on that point. But on the point of `deterministic', that's controversial as you know... Off to quantum machanics in the later parts. > I personally believe in beauty that is eternal, regardless of society > or fashions at the time. For example, symmetry, simplicity, > uniformity- however society changes, we always feel these forms of > beauty as the most "primal" ones. The symmetry in physics is > intrinsically beautiful- Maxwell's equations are a perfect way to > demonstrate that. The symmetry between electric and magnetic fields > naturally bring a sense of order and control for us humans. I don't really get that. At least, well now we need to define beauty. Beauty is often conceived as a product of human perception. I do believe that symmetry, simplicity and uniformity are primal in beauty, which are reflected in what I like and create, but that's my perception of beauty. It's subjective. It's popular throughout history, but that doesn't make something inherent out of it, when abstracting away human subjectivity. > But then, there's quantum mechanics. Things start to become uncertain, > where we start to question the foundations of our understandings...and > I don't know that much about quantum mechanics, so I cannot explain > it's beauty. I think quantum mechanics is where things get interesting, especially in correlation with... biology: cognition and neuroscience (which I am not an expert thereof). While quantum physics is not as deterministic as traditional physics, and in some sense less symmetric and uniform, I feel like it's even more fascinating: because the uncertainty makes possible the existence of free will. If all existed was traditional sciences, then how and when our neurons fire, like everything else in the world, is controlled by, well of course, ion movements and changes in chemical and electrical gradiants. It feels like everything is pre-determined, which is scary. But quantum machanics being seemingly random bring us the possibility of indeterminate things. And as much as scientific research should research how the world actually is rather than a world that humans deceive themselves into believing, it still feels more comfortable than knowing that the world is deterministic, because that's not the subjective phonomenon that humans tend to experience. So for me in some ways, quantum physics and neuroscience are `forever' linked. > There are ways that Physics is correspondant with philosophy, > especially stoicism? I'm unsure what stoicism means in this context, please elaborate. > The ideas that nature always obeys the way of least action is very > appealing. It gives me a sense over the world, so perhaps I get to > explore what role I play in this chaos. Existential crisis can be > partially solved by physics, because the pursuit of it is sublime > (personal opinion). Do you mean that the pursuit of existential crisis, or the pursuit of physics, is sublime? What kind of existential crisis do you have in mind? Entropy-related? Heat death of the universe? (Quick note: It's often plausible to use `thereof' instead of 'of it'.) > Also, it's cool to be able to explain the things around me. That's why > I like physics, but also Roman culture and classical music. They are > the winds presiding over the waves of our world. Also, navier stokes > equations are really neat. Fluid mechanics are pretty fun. That's too personal for me to be able to analyse and comment upon, but I get what you mean and sometimes I feel the same. > > I think I like math better because it can be seen purely as a human > > creation, one that we can manipulate to our will. But at the same > > time the limitations that the world puts on us in physics, the > > boundaries that we have to abide by, is also intellectually > > interesting in a similar sense (and note how ``in a ... sense'' just > > means ``I can't describe this really clearly but hopefully you get > > what I mean''). I think ultimately our ``origins of mind'' in Math > > and Physics are similar, just with a different approach. > > Mathematicians tend to be more concerned with the purity of logic, > while physicist may focus more on what it means in real life, even if > it means to abandon a whole theory that is flawlessly beautiful on its > own. I guess it is utilitarian in some way. I think your previous description of physics differs quite a bit from this paragraph. If the pursuit of physics is ultimately to understand the fundamental phenomenons underlying the world, it doesn't sound very reality-realism. Don't know---can you expand on this? Down to a few expansion points from me on this subject: Firstly, physics is in many ways `based-off' math. While often math is just an intermediate representation of phenomenons in physics as a symbolic language, a broken math system can still do a considerable amount of damage to modern physics---when for example we expect algebraic laws to stay true all the time throughout physics calculations. Our current system of math is incomplete and cannot prove itself consistent, thanks to Godel. (There's an accent with two dots above the `o' in their name, but let's try not to use Unicode.) And building physics upon a shaky representation framework, which many physics (previous) conjectures and `proofs' are founded upon. As Mr. Coxon said, `if the theory and the results from your experiments don't match, something is wrong'. And precisely this is one of the ways physics is more robust than pure math: If we find a contridiction in our math system, bummer, the sky just fell. But in physics, theories, `supposedly' `proven' by reason, have to go through experiments to know if it's ultimately true. And by taphat, contridictions won't lead to the sky falling, it just means that we need to build the world of physics along a better system of math, when the mathmetitians come along and fix math, I guess. This is also true in biology, though biology allows less for pure reason and depends more on experimental research in my experience. Finally, while you mentioned that scientific research usually results from intellectual curiosity, it is important to note that many famous scientists like Newton may have (ironically?) done scientific research as a proof of god's existance. This is a complicated subject, and some research might help, I only know the tip of the iceberg. Best regards, Andrew Yu -- https://www.andrewyu.org/ andrew at andrewyu.org s22537 at ykpaoschool.cn -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 228 bytes Desc: not available URL: